The danger of being a pooh-bah in Hollywood for decades is that after you walk down so many red carpets, it becomes difficult, impossible even, to believe that the crowds aren’t hysterically cheering for you. Before we turn the page on Les Moonves, let’s look back on the monumental hubris that allowed one man’s planetary ego to run so far amok—and the city that serves gladly as an incubator to such egos.

Last year, Les Moonves stood athwart legacy network television as the colossus who had defied the gods and kept an old-time TV channel prospering. Granted, that legend ignored some increasingly apocalyptic demographic trends and a stagnant stock price—but entertainment needs executive heroes, and Les Moonves remained, even as he crept up on 70, TV’s fair-haired boy.

Underneath the surface, though, there were these issues from his past. And after Weinstein, a person with a closet full of such ossein accumulation might well have thought this would be a good moment to quietly exit stage left. A lesser person might have thought that. But a man with the all-seeing vision to green-light 30 N.C.I.S. spinoffs knew better. Harvey was Harvey. Those others who seemed to fall by the day? They were them. They weren’t him, savior of a network, charter member of the Geffen Yacht Club, owner of $40 million worth of Malibu real estate, the man whose face lit up 100 smiles when he sauntered down the aisle at Nobu.

In fact, so much did Moonves not have to worry about any of this having anything to do with him that he was ready to go to war with the owner of his company—to declare he had more business deciding what to do with the company than the family that hired him and paid him the mountains of cash that purchased all of the above. He was willing to get into that fight with the Redstone heiress, even after she offered to put him in charge of her re-united media empire (presumably for an even bigger paycheck), because she wouldn’t also bring his sidekick along.

In Hollywood, where support for the oppressed is vented on-screen and off every day, Moonves’s supersized, with three-extra patties, jumbo-deluxe salary was taken at face value as a sign of indispensable genius, not a flashing red light warning sign.

It is the genius of Hollywood that an exec can sit at the helm of a $20 billion company with demographics trending in the wrong direction and a stagnating stock price and take home $69 million a year in compensation, compared to, say, Tim Cook, who was content with a mere $12 million for overseeing a trillion dollar company. That despite this, investors seemed content with knowing they had the sort of Man of Destiny who could sit back and say, “Tuesday night? How about another N.C.I.S.? Have we done Tacoma yet?”

And for the industry around him, there’s nothing at all out of the ordinary in the idea that the captain of a ship should claim every goodie he can find as his personal reward for hard labors; nothing at all in that behavior that would suggest: is this someone we should be worried about?

Even after Weinstein, the man with his overstuffed closet of secrets was willing to hold an entire conglomerate and all its employees hostage for the better part of a year over his right to not have to take orders from his owner. He was willing to do this even after he and they knew that the very reporter, the very same one, whose exposés had brought down Harvey was digging deep for a similar exposé on him.

What was the entertainment industry saying of this man and his fight, months into it?

As I’ve written before, last December—knowing this article was in progress—had he said, “You know, after decades building this company, I’m not going to be party to this mess,” he could’ve walked away with a nine-figure exit package, and no one would have questioned that decision. Having departed, he would’ve taken the wind out of The New Yorker’s sails and left them little reason to have Farrow and team spend a year investigating some guy who used to reboot 80s detective shows and sign checks to Chuck Lorre.

But instead, he decided to hold the town hostage. As the industry was in the midst of the most agonizing retooling, we had this drama on the plate also.

Then, the article came. The first one. Even after that, you had to turn over a lot of rocks to find anyone willing to say anything harsh about Nobu Les.

Now more has come out, and he has resigned. But there’s still talk that a man who allegedly used his position to abuse and prey upon people dependent on his company, and used the company to retaliate against them, should get to stay employed by it as a “consultant” and take home tens of millions. Still! Is this a negotiation with some minor despot over what it will take to get him to walk away and stop torturing his people?

After Harvey, many thought notice had been served to others in the community who supported, abetted, covered up, and excused this kind of behavior—that they too would be held accountable for their actions. Well, apparently not. Elsewhere in town, some very nervous abettors, people who have helped sweep some piles of trash under the welcome mat, have certainly noticed how fully that standard has been rolled back.

Hollywood remains something different than the pharmaceutical or petroleum industries. It’s why we still laugh at the arrivistes with their open wallets looking to buy their way into town. The power in Hollywood will never be just about the size of your bank account (although that’s part of it). Hollywood matters to the world because of its longtime near-monopoly on glamour—and it is glamour, proximity to it and ability to marshall it, that determines who you really are in this town.

Being part of that elite, in the end, is all that matters.

If you’re in the club, you can look over the railings of David Geffen’s yacht and see a planet full of people for whom Hollywood is The Dream. When the time came to stand up to this group, to risk making themselves awkward within it, Hollywood took a dive over the last month. Hollywood’s definition of courage is to be absolutely merciless to someone who has just lost all his power, and moments after Moonves stepped down, the Internet was crammed to the rafters with people rushing to take bold stands against him. For the elites, the ship sails on.